FoundersCard Is Like AmEx Black, But For Startups

“It always struck me as odd that these executives at these investment banks and these top companies would get these fantastic perks, and it was the entrepreneur, sort of the true value creators, that were left out,” New Yorker Eric Kuhn, who created FoundersCard, told Econsultancy in July.

It sounds like Kuhn had a rough time with his previous venture, Varsity Books, which was sued by the National Association of College Stores and had to settle: “When I was thinking about a new business, I kind of remembered the loneliness and the challenges of being an entrepreneur attempting to really convince the whole world that you’re gonna build this great company and feeling like everyone was against you and everything was a great struggle,” he said.

FoundersCard is a rewards program that offers discounts and benefits like hotels, airlines, gym and The Metropolitan Opera. The price tag for “leading entrepreneurs and innovators” is just $149 a month. Members also get deals from startups like fashion-rental service Rent The Runway and real-time advertising provider OneRiot.

The other perk to getting a shiny FoundersCard—besides being able to brag about it—is networking. FoundersCard hosts events in New York and San Francisco where founders rub elbows at the Fairmont Hotel or Apple’s corporate headquarters.

Kuhn has kept pretty quiet about FoundersCard, preserving the sense of exclusivity by relying on word of mouth (read: Twitter) to advertise.

But for all the talk of helping out the little guy, execs from plenty of major coporations like Google and Yahoo are also members.

We’ll find out how picky FoundersCard is soon—there’s an event coming up in NoHo next month.